"Understandings of Media" (original) (raw)

What are media? In a culture where TV is even more ubiquitous than indoor plumbing and there are more radios than people, this question seems too simple to deserve explicit response and debate. Yet our conceptions of media of communication, like other conceptions, are themselves mediated by mental constructs (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980). In particular, we rely — often subconsciously — on metaphorical thinking to simplify and clarify what media are. I argue that there are three core metaphors that have operated silently and simultaneously beneath the surface of research on communication technologies and have led to confusion and misunderstanding among those drawing on different metaphors. The three metaphors are: medium-as-vessel/conduit, medium-as-language, medium-as-environment. This essay very briefly outlines these three images of media. As noted on the first page of the article: (C) 1999 Joshua Meyrowitz. All rights reserved.